Friday Storm Alert: Missouri at Risk of Damaging Winds, Big Hail

You need to know that the computer models and the opinions of official forecasters are now in agreement. All of Missouri is now at risk of seeing severe thunderstorms at the end of this week with damaging winds, heavy rain and big hail possible.

I'm not gonna say that I told you so, but I told you so. Yesterday, I mentioned that computer models were predicting strong thunderstorm development over Missouri on Friday, but forecasters were not ready to officially back that theory. Now, they are. I knew it was likely just a matter of meteorologists getting more certain data before they officially chimed in with an advisory and now that's happened. This is the new update from the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center for Friday. Note that there is now a marginal risk for the northern half of Missouri, but all of the state at least now has some level of risk.

Midwest Weather also shared this interesting graphic about conditions over northeast Missouri on Friday.

Very high dew points over Missouri on Friday will be a factor in the possibility of heavy rainfall and hail, but the Storm Prediction Center says that the main concern at this point is damaging wind.

I'll only make one more prediction that's not based on science, but just my gut feeling and that's my expectation that we'll see one more escalated advisory prior to Friday. We'll find out soon enough if this will be a major storm event for Missouri this Friday or just some much-needed rain. Make sure you're weather aware and have multiple ways to get alerts if it ends up being severe storms over our heads again.